A Briton is attempting to set a new world record for the most comments on an online news article, in a scheme aimed at raising £100,000 for the Royal National Lifeboat Institution (RNLI).

Trefor Davies, chief technology officer of Timico, began the attempt at 6am GMT on Thursday and is attempting to get around 100,000 unique comments – more than one per second – in the 24 hours.

His post, at his websote trefor.net, is also intended to raise money for charity: for every comment that people leave, Davies aims to raise £1 for the RNLI.

"We all need to look forwards to 2012 with hope and inspiration. With that in mind we are looking for comments about a person or organisation that has been an inspiration to you and you think will make a difference in 2012. Feel free to leave a link in the comment to their website or blog. Don't worry if you can't think of anyone – just a comment will be fine," Davies writes.

He is also encouraging people to spread the word about the attempt on social media using the #comment24 hashtag.

The attempt is being overseen by the Guinness World Records organisation which will authenticate it if it meets or exceeds the record. The existing record is for 80,030 comments on a Facebook item, which was set by Greenpeace on 14 April 2011.

Davies says that he originally had the idea in a pub – but that turning it into reality turned out to be more daunting.

At 10.20am, the site had more than 550 comments, but Davies is expecting interest to accelerate through the day.Comments are intentionally off here: if you'd like to comment, please do so on Davies's post.